A United Nations department has barred a Canadian online news outlet from attending next month’s Conference of the Parties (COP 22) in Morocco.

Earlier this month, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat informed The Rebel, the right wing news and opinion platform published by political commentator Ezra Levant, it was rejecting the outlet’s application to send a producer and a reporter to COP22 on the grounds that “advocacy media outlets do not qualify for accreditation.”

The Rebel had made arrangements for its Alberta bureau chief Sheila Gunn Reid and producer Meaghan MacSween to be in Marrakesh when the conference takes place November 7 to 18. Their applications for media accreditation to UNFCCC were denied and an application for a cameraman is yet to receive a response.

“The UN can’t stand having three skeptical journalists out of 3,000 journalists they’re accrediting — most of whom love the UN’s global warming agenda,” Levant said in an interview. “What a perfect symbol of the UN and the global warming debate: intolerant of dissent, arrogant and undemocratic. And sad proof that the journalists who will be attending Marrakech are all UN-approved.”

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In an October 6 letter requesting the UNFCCC reconsider its decision, a lawyer acting for The Rebel argues the publication is a bona fide news organization. “The Rebel brings to the Canadian community an intelligent and informed approach to everyday issues with a conservative focus,” said Stuart Robertson of O’Donnell, Robertson and Sanfilippo. “It has a staff of 25 persons … A member of the staff is accredited with the National Press Gallery at the Parliament of Canada.”

Robertson, who also works with Postmedia and the National Post, adds that The Rebel has an editorial policy which requires that subjects of its coverage be given an opportunity to provide a response in advance, and that it practices other editorial and legal protocols typical of a news organization. He also notes that Article 19 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes the right of all people to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media.”

The UNFCCC requires online media that apply for accreditation to have a street address and phone number, publish least 60 per cent original news content or commentary and analysis, operate a website that is updated at least three times a week, and provide two sample articles from the month prior to application. The Rebel meets all those qualifications, and there is no mention of “advocacy journalism” on the UNFCCC’s website.

The UNFCCC did not reply to a request for comment.

The international organization’s rejection of the media start up has also prompted major concerns about freedom of expression and freedom of the press from three prominent Canadian advocacy groups: PEN Canada, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) and the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ). All three have intervened and petitioned the UNFCCC on The Rebel’s behalf.

“(The Rebel) consistently publishes original news stories that often go otherwise untold,” wrote CAJ President Nick Taylor-Vaisey in an October 13 letter to the UNFCCC.

Taylor-Vaisey said that CAJ is particularly concerned that the outlet “was denied accreditation on the basis of publishing ‘advocacy journalism,’ a term the UNFCCC website fails to define (which raises a serious concern that the label is provided arbitrarily).”

“The vagueness of the term ‘advocacy media’ makes its application highly discretionary in our view, and would encompass much of general news journalism,” wrote Grace Westcott, Executive Director of PEN Canada, in an October 5 letter to the UNFCCC. “Opinion pages, special reports, indeed advocacy journalism appears in many of the world’s great news sources, including The Guardian and The New York Times.”

Added Westcott: “We believe that the real or perceived biases of a news agency lie beyond the scope of the secretariat and are irrelevant to the question of whether a legitimately constituted news outlet is properly admitted to the Conference.”

“For a free press to function, governments and intergovernmental organizations must not deny access to events of public interest based on arbitrary or opaque determinations of a media outlet’s size, audience or political leanings,” said CJFE Executive Director Tom Henheffer in an October 14 letter to the UNFCCC.

I’m pleased that Canada’s leading journalism NGOs have supported our cause
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Levant said he is grateful for the support. “I’m pleased that Canada’s leading journalism NGOs have supported our cause,” he said. “They know that if we can be blacklisted by the UN today, anyone can be blacklisted tomorrow.”

It’s not the first time outside support has rallied around the conservative news organization when it has been barred from press events. Earlier this year, Alberta’s NDP government banned The Rebel from attending media availabilities, but following public and professional uproar a spokesperson later admitted “it’s clear we made a mistake” and accreditation was restored.

These are total pros, with years of journalistic experience amongst them.

Here's the UN's one-line excuse: we are “advocacy journalists”, a term they do not define and has not to our knowledge been used by the UN before. They don’t even have the courage to sign their mealy-mouthed rejection letter.

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Perhaps the UN means “opinion journalists”. But opinion journalism is a legitimate type of journalism, and comprised a large proportion of the 3,000 journalists who covered last year’s UN global warming conference in France, and will cover this year’s in Morocco.

We’re not being kept out because we have an opinion. We’re being kept out because they think we have the wrong opinion.

They’ve just made up the excuse. Because if we were indeed being blacklisted because we hold a point of view, how can the UN approve journalists who are literally paid propagandists for authoritarian regimes, like China’s Xinhua and CCTV, and even Qatar’s Al Jazeera and Russia’s RT?

Many independent western media have an explicit advocacy orientation too, especially on the subject of global warming, including online outlets like Vice, Huffington Post and Buzzfeed.

The UN even welcomes global warming lobby groups, including “community organizers” posing as journalists. Greenpeace-style blogs, like Canada’s own DeSmog Blog attend in full advocacy mode, as well as other small websites like The Tyee and the Vancouver Observer, both supported by Tides.

And that’s all fine – the United Nations’ own Declaration of Human Rights says “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

The UN is breaking its own rules by denying us those same rights. That’s pretty much how they roll over there — after all, it’s an organization where Russia and China have a veto at the security council, and where dictatorships like Saudi Arabia sit on the human rights council. So they’re treating us like they’d treat journalists in Iran or Cuba.

This has happened before. Earlier this year, when Sheila went to a press conference in Edmonton with Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley, she was met by an armed sheriff blocking her from the Alberta Legislature. It was a scandal, and Notley backed down only in the face of national condemnation.

But Notley, although she’s a bully, still has to operate in a democracy. But the UN bureaucrats who have blacklisted us are anonymous. And they don't have to worry about stuffy things like democratic accountability. The UN has not even replied to our lawyer’s polite requests for an explanation. Three non-partisan journalism NGOs – PEN Canada, The Canadian Association of Journalists and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression – have each written letters to the UN in support of our application. They have been ignored as well.

Sign The Petition Now

Here are copies of our lawyer's letters, and the letters of support from the three journalism NGOs:

But we’re going to send our journalists to Marrakech no matter what. Even if we have to stand outside and shout questions at the elites as they arrive in their fossil-fuel-burning limousines. If you're in a position to help defray our travel costs, please click here to chip in. Unlike the state broadcasters the UN prefers, we're 100% independent.

Thanks for your support. And please post our website address, www.LetUsReport.com as your Facebook status, to help spread the word!

The big debate going on right now, in the circles of the real climate scientists (as opposed to the fruit-fly expert that retired and turned himself into a CBC pitchman for the last 40 years) ... the real scientific debate has to with explaining this 'pause' in global warming without throwing out the whole CO2 hypothesis.

The political fighting is over who gets the income from all this climate amelioration -- or more likely, the income split between the UN and the nation states. Nobody has a practical plan to do anything effective, and as long as China and India refuse to play ball, it won't change the prospects much.

The two have almost nothing to do with each other. The real science can't explain why we have stopped getting hotter, but the plans to tax carbon goes ahead, regardless.

It's my belief that those who want to implement social change have the burden of proof that the changes will bring a benefit worthy of the cost. Can this be done when they simply refuse to deal with the skeptics?

It's like an admission that they don't have the scientific backing they should have before they start spending $trillions on hare-brained ideas that have never worked where they've been tried.

The decision to bar The Rebel Media from attending a United Nations climate conference next month is seriously out of line.

Ezra Levant of The Rebel Media says he hopes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will go to bat for his online publication after he says it was barred from a United Nations climate conference.

We don’t often find ourselves in agreement with The Rebel Media, the online outfit run by right-wing firebrand Ezra Levant.

But the decision to bar the outlet from attending a United Nations climate conference next month is seriously out of line. You don’t have to agree with anything The Rebel says to be concerned about UN officials discriminating against media organizations on the basis of their political leanings.

That’s what appears to be happening here. The Rebel applied to have a three-person team accredited to cover a major climate meeting called COP22 to be held in Marrakech, Morocco. It was rejected on the grounds that “advocacy media outlets do not qualify for accreditation,” and there’s a strong suspicion that The Rebel’s skeptical views on climate change have a lot to do with the decision.

On the face of it, this makes little sense. Most media organizations practice some form of advocacy journalism, and their views on the issues shouldn’t disqualify them from attending.

PEN Canada, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and the Canadian Association of Journalists have all spoken out against this ill-judged UN decision. They’re right. Excluding The Rebel sets a troubling precedent and the UN should change its mind.

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